Manufacturer Turns Flamingos Out By The Yard

December 10, 1985|By Janet Cawley, Chicago Tribune.

TORONTO — ``What do pink flamingos have on their front lawns?`` goes one joke making the rounds. ``Little plastic Yuppies.``

Donald Henderson, Canada`s only manufacturer of pink flamingos, grins at the idea. As president and owner of Tucker Plastics Inc., he is one of those most responsible for giving a whole new meaning to the word ``tacky`` and a whole new look to lawns, planters and even store windows across North America. Clearly it`s no fly-by-night job. His company, which makes a variety of plastic products and garden supplies, turned out more than 100,000 sets of pink flamingos this year for distribution in Canada and the United States. Each set contains two birds. ``A male and a female,`` Henderson said. ``Just don`t ask me which is which.`` They are poised on steel legs suitable for jamming into the soil or any other convenient receptacle.

Keeping up with flamingo demand is not easy, and the unprepared manufacturer can be left without a leg to stand on. Henderson estimates sales are up 35 percent this year and the craze is far from peaking.

It actually should be called a flamingo comeback. The day-glow birds were popular in the 1950s among homeowners who wanted to make their lawns a little different from their neighbors`.

But now, many buyers seem to be from the ranks of young professionals. A pasta machine and Perrier in the kitchen often can mean a flamingo lurking somewhere else on the premises.

``It`s a bit of an attempt to be different,`` Henderson theorized as he sat at his executive desk in front of a large poster of flamingos. ``Maybe an attempt to establish individuality. And it`s a nostalgic looking back to a previous era.``

Whatever the rationale, flamingos are flying high and Henderson delights in telling some favorite stories:

``This may be apocryphal, but there`s a very exclusive suburb in Cleveland with strict architectural rules--a committee determines what a homeowner is allowed to put up. And there supposedly was this man who had a couple kids and a long winding driveway so they couldn`t see the school bus when it came. He wanted to put up a shelter for them by the side of the road and the committee said no, a couple of times. Finally he retaliated by buying 1,000 pairs of pink flamingos and putting them all over his lawn. The next day the committee approved the shelter.

``There was a similar situation, I think in Canada, when this man started covering his lawn with stone squirrels and deer and his neighbors objected. So they put flamingos all over their yards on either side.``

Flamingos are common in the windows of upscale boutiques displaying everything from jewelry to sunglasses. Shopping centers also are big buyers. A shopping center in Alberta bought 350 pairs to stage a ``flamingos return to North Calgary`` display reminiscent of the swallows winging it back to Capistrano.

Henderson said he has heard of weddings where pink flamingos lined the aisle. Not long ago, a Toronto disc jockey campaigned to have the bird named the official mascot of the city`s sesquicentennial.

There have been reports of flamingo-napings, and a new verb has even been added to the lexicon: to flamingo, as in ``We flamingoed his lawn.``

In the flamingo-eat-flamingo sales world, Henderson reports only two main competitors, Union Products in Leominster, Mass., and Lawnware Products in Morton Grove, Ill. Although those companies have a much larger share of the U.S. market, Henderson said his company competes ``quite effectively`` in the States, selling flamingos to garden centers, mass merchandisers and regional chains.

Henderson said a set of the 2-foot-high birds sells for $6 to $10 in Canada (U.S. $4.44 to $7.35).

Indeed, only once has his flamingo output been less than pinkly perfect. In April, 1984, there was a fire in a subcontractor`s plant ``and the molds melted down into lumps of aluminum.`` It took 10 to 15 weeks to bring in an industrial product designer and create a new mold but Henderson was pleased with the result: ``We got more feather detail in the wing area and a new angle to the neck.``

The Tucker Plastics plant is in the province of Quebec near the Vermont border. There, a blow-molding machine can whip out two flamingos every 37 seconds.

In Quebec, in true bilingual fashion, the birds are known as flamants roses.

As for how long the flamingo craze will last, Henderson said: ``These things are like fads. You can`t anticipate them. It`s not quite the hula hoop of the `80s, because marketing now is different. It`s more segmented. . . .

``We don`t attempt to make something that looks like a real flamingo. This is a stylized plastic version. It stands alone, so to speak.``

What about his own house? Are there any fine-feathered flamingos populating the lawn?

``Well, I can`t not have any,`` he said. ``I have a bush in my back yard with a couple around it and a spotlight that I turn on them when we have a party.``